COUNTRY HOUSES
About us
Nash Partnership has many years’ experience of delivering expert and bespoke design to private clients and organisations in the South West region, London and further afield. We are an award-winning practice which provides architecture, planning and heritage services throughout the UK.
The quality of each of our projects speaks volumes about the approach we take. We implement innovative thought and creativity, working closely with consultants to deliver an end result that exceeds expectations.
Proven track record of exemplar residential design
In-depth understanding of contemporary architecture
Conservation and heritage specialists and RIBA Specialist Conservation Architects
Planning consultants – we succeed where others fail
Bespoke services to meet exacting requirements
Design and project management –we can manage your project from start to finish
Sustainability expertise
Feasibility and cost analysis
Existing relationships with interior designers and landscape architects
Client engagement and communication
Holystreet Manor
Dartmoor National Park
Holystreet Manor is a Grade II listed property located in the Teign Valley near to Chagford within the Dartmoor National Park. Holystreet was one of 16 farms listed in the Doomsday survey as part of the Manor of Chagford and Teigncombe, belonging to the Bishop of Coutances. It is also more recently linked with Mary Ellis and her father who was important in the construction of the first car.
The manor is one of a number of buildings within the immediate estate and grounds, including a garage block with a two-bedroom flat, a stable block with a three-bedroom cottage and a further two-bedroom flat, all of which have individual historic importance.
Nash Partnership was asked to help rationalise the internal layout of the building which had seen many changes of use over the past 100 years. Natural light and the internal space needed much improvement whilst adding some exciting new extensions to maximise the potential of the unique location of the manor.
A south-facing garden room, natural pool and pool house and new atrium all add to the manor. We were responsible for the planning strategy, conservation advice and architectural design which included early liaison with the local council and parish which helped steer this project through the statutory process and deliver the client’s brief.
Key Features
Grade II listed
Other key consultants
Carpenter Oak & WoodlandTimber Frame
Artichoke - Bespoke Furniture (Kitchens and Bathrooms)
Artus - Period Carpenters
Conrad Batten - Garden Design
Mid-Cornwall - Landscaping
Clear Water Revival - Natural pools
Riga Spas
Courtstall - Tennis Courts
Eardington Mill Shropshire
Nash Partnership managed the part demolition and extension of a single large kitchen/reception space that overlooks the part ruined walls of the old mill that now form a sheltered courtyard garden. Working closely with structural engineers Mann Williams, we have constructed the new extension on piled foundations to avoid disturbance to the original structure and foundation of the mill. The building includes an
open staircase to the lower levels and planed oak trusses.
On-going restoration work and alterations are continuing and Nash Partnership has been commissioned to further support the project over a ten-year period. The commission was secured following exemplar work undertaken by us at Westley Richards for which our client is the MD.
Key Features
Old mill
Other key consultants
Jinny Blom – Gardens / landscape design
Mann Williams – Structural engineer
Hubert Zandberg of HZ InteriorsInterior design
Didmarton Manor
Gloucestershire
A listed Manor House with substantial barns, stables, cart lodges and a cottage. The property had been neglected for many years, with areas being effectively abandoned as they became surplus to use, and the previous owners retreated.
to the best rooms. Our clients were exceptionally concerned that the building’s historic features should be conserved and repaired, including substantial areas of Georgian panelling.
The Manor House is built around the remains of a once Grand Tudor manor, substantially extended and modernised in the Restoration Period.
A single storey late Victorian wing replaced two north bays lost to fire, and approximately half of the southern elevation was demolished in the late 19th century. Substantial areas of timber panelling survive with the main house with the earliest surviving
paint layers dated to the 1770’s by a specialist conservator.
After a period of careful research and investigation together with other conservation professionals we submitted a scheme that received approval for remodelling the interior of the Victorian wing to make a better connection with the main house, re-using semi-derelict areas and protecting the staircases. The renewal of services, particularly the electrical system, and safeguarding the escape from the upper floors has been critical to bringing the building back into use.
Key Features
Grade II listed
Other key consultants
Greengauge – building and engineering consultancy
Paul Carpenter Associates –structural engineers
Lupton House Devon
We were appointed to provide heritage services to the Lupton Trust a charitable group looking to return Lupton House to use for the community. Our appointment was for the restoration of an exceptionally early Victorian Italianate garden that formed part of the Grade II* registered Lupton Park. In common with many large historic house schools sites significant repair works are required to halt decades of relative neglect.
The Italianate Garden was extremely overgrown with flower beds lost, large sections of the stone balustrades damaged, decayed or missing, cast ironwork removed and the fountain inoperable.
We were appointed with other consultants to help prepare a Stage 2 lottery bid, undertake heritage research and prepare documentation for Listed Building applications and tender. Via survey work on site and research we were able to show the stone work of the Italianate Garden had been substantially reconstructed recently, and that the now
derelict Aviary building had a greater significance than previously thought being an exceptionally rare building type with only two others on the national list. As a result of our work the Trust is now looking to prepare a revised Lottery Application taking into account a wider scope.
We have been able to identify business strands and conservation priorities for the Trust that will help them manage the property in the future. The Trust is now undertaking a review of their business plan in order to widen its impact, prove viable uses for the Aviary and to understand how the garden can best be utilised to augment their existing business model. In turn this will help attract new visitors to the site increase the level of public understanding.
Key features
Victorian Italianate garden within a Grade II* listed park
Other key consultants
RLB
McLaughlin Ross
Nightingale Lodge Somerset
When our client bought this 19th century Grade II listed Tudoresque lodge as a second home, it had been derelict for some time. As a result, considerable conservation work was needed to bring it back into use.
Set within the grounds of Orchardleigh Park, the building is of one storey with a half octagonal frontage and a twostorey gabled porch. By restoring the original metal windows and removing an inappropriate 1970’s subdivision, we were able to reveal and restore many of the original elements.
Parkland estate fencing was restored along the boundary and the building was sympathetically extended to the rear to create a further bedroom.
Nightingale Lodge was one of the first lodges on the estate to be restored and the whole estate has since been regenerated.
Key features
Restoration of a Grade II listed derelict lodge
Other key consultants
Wraxall Builders
Mann Williams - structural engineers
Broadwalk House
London
Nash Partnership was invited to design two bespoke Georgian style grand houses in the leafy suburbs of Enfield. The existing site had a large 1970s house set within a beautiful two-acre landscape. The house was proposed for demolition and we were instructed to prepare designs for two individual houses each approximately 12,000ft² utilising a ground source heat pump.
Our sketches demonstrated elegantly proportioned houses, maximising views and introducing pool houses to the rear gardens. Large living room spaces took full advantage of the garden views with room-width sliding folding doors.
With highly influential neighbours scrutinising our designs, the layouts had to be carefully crafted to address neighbours’ concerns and eliminate
any overlooking. As a result of careful pre-application and considered design, these two grand houses sailed through the planning process and are now fully occupied.
Key Features
Each house C.12,000 ft2
Ground source heat pump used to heat indoor swimming pool
OTHER CONSERVATION PROJECTS
Over the last 30 years, our team has managed projects on several hundred historic buildings, in a multitude of conservation areas, involving ancient monuments, historic landscapes and world heritage sites. Our conservation and regeneration projects have included castles and palaces, theatres and cinemas, MOD and education establishments, historic factories, seaside piers, cathedrals, museums, hotels, churches and homes built over many centuries.
Great Pulteney Street Bath
The fine Georgian terrace was designed at the end of the 18th century by the architects Thomas Baldwin and is listed Grade I. The six-storey properties were for many years used as hotels, nursing homes, offices and surgeries and n2 was commissioned to investigate converting two of these terraces into contemporary homes.
Our work included a detailed survey and analysis of the floor plans with care being taken to produce designs that enabled residential use suitable for modern day family living in a historic six-storey town house. n2 also secured listed building
consent and planning approvals, overseeing construction to completion. We established where repairs were required including cleaning ornamental plasterwork and implementing a new entrance from Great Pulteney Street and staircases ensuring both houses had generous accommodation over six floors, and private rear gardens.
Claverton Manor, Bath Bath
The American Museum in Britain occupies Claverton Manor and is set in a 125-acre estate which has developed into an educational, cultural and social institution of great value to Bath and the region. A Grade I listed building, the estate lies within the South Cotswolds Area of Outstanding National Beauty and the Bath peripheral Green Belt.
We have worked with the Trustees and Directors over the past 20 years, acting as lead consultants, to care for the estate and work with its historic buildings to create a wide range of new facilities. Our work often demanded the careful balancing of specialist maintenance of the estate’s historic assets while rigorously exploring the potential of available spaces to improve the Museum’s income stream.
Strengthening resilience
Due to concerns about falling visitor numbers, a 10-year phased development plan was developed to re-establish the Museum’s social and cultural identity and purpose. It provided a sustainable business plan that would enable the museum to adhere to a maintenance plan for the estate as well as fund larger development projects.
Our work has included planning, conservation advice, project management and construction design and delivery to repair the historic fabric; create new basement galleries; bring full disability access to the Manor; build a new restaurant; create education facilities, an auditorium and extensive new gardens.
Improving accessibility
We began working with the Museum in 1996. Our first project involved the installation of a lift in the four storey Claverton Manor in response to the Disability Discrimination Act. This would enable all visitors to have good access to the mansion, large parts of which they had previously been excluded from. This small but technically challenging project demanded detailed surveys to demonstrate that a bespoke lift could be accommodated without detriment to the building.
With greater access to all levels, the restoration of the basement galleries opened up further opportunities to extend exhibits to include fragile native American artefacts. Critical to this was the need to ensure that damp issues were resolved. As part of a gallery
redesign, a sophisticated air handling system was installed to help address this problem.
Increased visitor numbers
To meet the demand from increased visitor numbers – a result of the initial phase of work – a re-configuration and extension to the Orangery created a bigger café area and accommodate larger visitor groups.
Creating education and events spaces
To further build on the programmes offered by the Museum, the neoclassical coach house and stables were converted to create flexible space for temporary exhibitions alongside lecture rooms and an auditorium. The stables had originally been designed for miniature ponies and the building had provided difficult to use being a single low space. By lowering the floor by 1.5m and in-filling the segment of the crescent, we were able to create an intimate auditorium with excellent acoustics. The ability to host a series of events added further to the museum’s income stream.
Burwalls
Bristol
Located on the western slide of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in an area of outstanding beauty and designated as a Site of Significant Scientific interest, Burwalls is a Grade II listed mansion in a stunning five-acre parkland setting. This sensitive restoration included the conversion of the main house into four luxury apartments and six new homes.
High quality development in a historic setting
Burwalls comprises a historic Grade II listed mansion, stable block and lodge set in mature landscape gardens and grounds in an area designated as green belt within the Leigh Woods Conservation area. It has magnificent views over the Avon Gorge and to the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
This project needed sensitive and imaginative treatment to capture and extend the quality of the mature historic setting across the site. By developing a landscape master plan, we could
show the potential of new and exciting interventions that were sensitive to the setting and re-engaged with the grandeur of the building. Listed building consent to convert and develop this heritage asset estate was achieved through delegation, through considered design and stakeholder consultation.
A landscape strategy to guide the management and maintenance of the landscape was also developed to reassure the planning authority that the quality, sustainability, ecology and biodiversity of Burwalls will be maintained in the long term.
Our role on this project was to provide design, principal designer and construction delivery services for this high-quality development which retains and enhances the splendour of the manor house. Finished and detailed to a very high standard, presales are reported to be achieving the highest square foot value in the entire South West.
Hartlebury Castle Worcestershire
Our expertise in working with heritage assets meant we were appointed to a project at this beautiful Grade I listed building.
We were initially appointed by a charitable trust looking to buy the property, which included the former Bishop’s Palace, with the County Museum occupying one wing and out-buildings scheduled for disposal by church commissioners. Our initial role was to advise on repairs and alterations to this Grade I listed property.
However, it quickly became apparent that the real need was to identify uses that can adapt to the constraints of site and the buildings and attract new uses worthy of its social and cultural status. So we helped the trust to develop a business plan for a successful Heritage Lottery Fund Application. The project focus was then to identify uses that minimise any intervention within the building whilst obtaining sufficient return to justify the purchase of the building.
We showed how one of the castle’s main assets and also a key limitation, the 18th century Bishop Hurd Library, could be used as the focus of a research and specialist education offer and showed how the building facilities could be of value to the County Council too as educational providers. We also demonstrated how these assets, both internal and external, could be used as a focus for regional, cultural and craft workshops and to give the building status across as many lives and organisations as possible; to the Church, business organisations, the County Council, English Heritage and other consultees. This work enabled the Trustees to prepare and submit applications to Heritage Lottery (and other funders) around a much more visionary and joined up role worthy of many centuries of social and cultural capital. Also, on the strength of our analysis, the Hereford and Worcester Chamber of Commerce agreed to run an Enterprise Centre at Hartlebury Castle. This won the funds needed to acquire it.
Pantglas Hall Carmarthenshire
In Carmarthenshire, the country house of an early 19th century industrialist was substantially destroyed by a fire. Only its listed lofty tower and an associated length of elevation remained. Its leisure venue owners had planning obligations to restore it as a condition of their planning permission. It was in poor structural condition with all its intermediate floors and many timber lintels substantially decayed.
We surveyed the structure from a structural stability hydraulic hoist, testing the soundness of the stucco rendering and ornamental mouldings and its structurability. This allowed a detailed specification of repairs to be prepared, which – in turn – allowed competitive pricing of the works by builders, with little need of variations once the contractor’s scaffolding was in place and work underway.
The completion of the work then allowed the leisure operator to fully utilise the benefits of their planning permission for the estate Pantglas Tower continues to dominate.
Belcombe Court
Wiltshire
Belcombe Court is a small country house estate west of the small Wiltshire town of Bradford-on-Avon of Grade I status. Its land encircles an 18th century Grade I listed Georgian country house, which lies in steep and heavily wooded topography and is largely invisible beyond its walls.
Belcombe’s owner had ambitious plans to restore the neglected elements of its 19th century romantic grounds, including a woodland wilderness. Plans also included the repair of existing garden buildings, summer houses and grottos needing a gravity-fed water supply reservoir and distribution system, and creating a great variety of new garden facilities in the largely derelict walled vegetable garden.
In the context of a Grade I listed building and an estate on the Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens, the planning case for each of these interventions had to be built on thorough research, a testing of options and demonstration of impacts and mitigation measures.
The architectural quality of the house set a high standard for the design and craftsmanship of all new work. Our team worked closely with many specialist craft skills in creating new stone walls, steps and ornamentation. We also worked with ironworkers for new gates and railings, a shell artist for restoring the 18th century grotto and – throughout the project –with the estate’s gardeners.
The project has expanded Belcombe’s rich and picturesque character into the surrounding landscape. It included some very particular design and planning challenges, such as creating a large tennis court on a steeply sloping site, converting an 18th century dovecote into a guest suite and designing an open-framed floating boathouse on the nearby river.
For our client, the work has added a range of ancillary assets to an historic house and diversified the landscape of gardens and park.
Westley Richards Birmingham
The relocation of the famous sporting gun manufacturers, Westley Richards, to a new site within the Birmingham gun quarter resulted from the compulsory purchase of their existing historic building.
By combining a new build factory with restored and converted 19th century brick warehouses, we have created a working and visitor environment appropriate for a firm whose work depends wholly on highly skilled and visually refined craft-workmanship for a global market.
The new factory incorporates an underground test firing range and a modern pressings factory unit for Westley Engineering.
The new purpose designed pressing and tooling factory provides factory floor space and an ancillary space in a steel portal frame. The envelope of the factory is formed using a combination of insulated brick panels, insulated wall panels and light-diffusing panels which maximise the natural daylight to the working areas.
As some of the client’s specialist machines (such as their water lathe) are sensitive to vibration, areas of the reinforced concrete floor were purpose designed to incorporate isolated concrete bases.
James Purdey & Sons West London
After occupying the site for nearly 30 years, a new purpose-built factory for gun and rifle makers James Purdey & Sons Ltd has provided 2,300m² of new accommodation, a dedicated parking area and arrival courtyard for visitors and a new underground test facility.
A new building to improve working conditions
Located between their Mayfair showroom and the West London Shooting Grounds, a new purpose-built factory was designed to create the best working conditions suitable for one of the finest gun makers in London. The new buildings replaced single storey accommodation with a three-story structure, redesigned to include high levels of diffused daylighting lighting for the craftsmen and engravers.
Dedicated spaces to maximise efficiency
Working in collaboration with a specialist firing range consultant, we developed
the design to create dedicated spaces including a computer controlled, vibration sensitive machine shop, a separate gun making, assembly, finishing and testing floor and an underground calibrated test firing facility. All of the new working spaces are designed around a courtyard above hidden undercroft car parking and adjoin a dedicated reception suite for Purdey’s international customers.
The new building provides a wide range of specialist servicing requirements across the diversity of manufacturing, finishing, and testing which includes the supply of gases and machining coolant and extraction of chemical and combustion fumes, dust and machine waste. This plus taking into account the acoustic demands of building a test facility in a substantially residential area, is one of our most technically advanced buildings completed.
Cheltenham College
Cheltenham
The public school of Cheltenham College is highly prominent. Several listed buildings and landscaped grounds contribute to the character of this part of Cheltenham’s conservation area and to the school’s qualities. When Cheltenham College wished to embark on an ambitious programme of faculty expansion, Nash Partnership was commissioned to advise on building confidence in the organisation’s longterm plans. This involved enabling new facilities to be planned over many years without the frustrations of planning difficulties as each came forward.
To build such an Institutional Development Plan, we talked to all faculty leaders and charted how all buildings were used. We investigated the efficiency of their utilisation patterns with regard to energy use, and movement patterns for pupils and staff around the campus. We identified and
tested where new buildings could be most optimally located, considering the listed building setting or conservation character. We also showed why some buildings are particularly unsuited for their present pattern of uses or why they incur high energy and management costs. By swapping some uses around, higher and more cost effective utilisation could be achieved with lower relative repair and maintenance and heating costs. Our study concluded that some peripheral buildings could effectively be shared with other users and generate income for the College.
From this work, we produced a 15-year Institutional Masterplan which could be endorsed by the local planning authority and Historic England. From this, new facilities and reuse development projects could be rolled out year by year over this term.
Nash Partnership is a built environment, regeneration, planning and design consultancy, first established in 1988 in the West of England. Our professional services and advice skillset now embrace the discipline of research geography, regeneration strategy, heritage asset consultancy, planning, urban design and architecture. Through learning to combine these perspectives in our own team we are well equipped to work well with multi-headed corporate and public sector clients and project teams. Working together, our team aims to bring a comprehensive understanding to how our built environments have become the way they are and how effective strategy can be built to improve them in the future. We know the built environments humans have created throughout the world reflect our patterns of economic activity and determine our impacts on the planet. We are working to recover the necessary balance.
Bath Office
23a Sydney Buildings, Bath, BA2 6BZ 01225 442424
Bristol Office
The Generator, Counterslip, Bristol, BS1 6BX 0117 332 7560
London Office
Two Kingdom Street, Paddington, London W2 6BD 0203 7648777
www.nashpartnership.com
mail@nashpartnership.com